Since the original topic is closed, I think it's fair to continue with it here:

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You need to take your needs to a senator as these are senate decisions. I have suggested to you quite a few times that you take your suggestions to your senator and if you do they aren't making it into the senate as I can only recall one that made it through to our senate.

Maybe you should join the senate next term and see how much work it is behind the scenes.

And

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The role of Senator is not onerous and decisions are only likely to be taken a few times a year.

How much visibility is there in the work that the senate does do? Absolutely none. No reporting, no feedback, no nothing.

How much visibility is there in the background work that GCA does do for the Australian Geocaching community? Absolutely none again.

The senator system needs to start selling and promoting itself more. GCA needs to organize itself better to take advantages of the (legal and social) system. Setup a structure in which people can see who/what/where with regards to roles and responsibilities. And publish that stuff, report about it. Have a quarterly status report on what the senate did and what GCA did and publish it.

If you want to have real-life open-source project examples of what how it can work and what you can do which you can use as a reference model, please do let me know, either public here or private via email.

How much visibility is there in the work that the senate does do? Absolutely none. No reporting, no feedback, no nothing.

Virtually nothing comes our way, when it does, we decide and then post an announcement to the community. Typically this is in the 'Whats New on Geocaching Australia' thread.We discuss new ideas, potential social media strategies and that's usually about it. The output on FB and wherever is the result.We have had a handful of commercial approaches over the last decade and the senate has chosen the fate of those deals (spoiler: All were rejected, mainly due to irrelevance to geocaching. We don't announce these as there has to be a level of commercial-in-confidence sometimes).

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How much visibility is there in the background work that GCA does do for the Australian Geocaching community? Absolutely none again.

I have no idea what this means, we run a website. GCA has been involved very occasionally with some outside projects (Burke and Wills, Big Brothers and Sisters) however we are not an advocacy or a representative group.

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The senator system needs to start selling and promoting itself more. GCA needs to organize itself better to take advantages of the (legal and social) system. Setup a structure in which people can see who/what/where with regards to roles and responsibilities. And publish that stuff, report about it. Have a quarterly status report on what the senate did and what GCA did and publish it.

The reason you don't hear much from the senate is that, frankly, we don't have that many discussions apart from spit balling new cache types and games, which we do like to keep quiet to have that element of surprise.

We don't have a secretary, treasurer, meetings or anything formal to report to you on, we are NOT a formal organisation, we are not a society, we are not even really a well formed project or anything. We are a website. A website for a niche percent of a niche (and diminishing) hobby. And we do it for a net financial loss, with frankly totally indifference (bordering outright hostility) to us from most of the broader geocaching community. Because we believe Geocaching should be free to play.

You want the financials? They get posted every year.

Is there anything in particular you think we should report back to the community on that we haven't done?

It would be more attractive if there was a "What is Geocaching Australia" link on the front page or on the menu so that the information was findable (and not the famous Douglas Adams version of findable [*]) and usable for advocacy. I'm more than happy to jot things down.

Currently the website is a great technological workflow for hiding, finding and logging and it works like a charm, absolutely.But will it help the game of geocaching in Australia? No, because that part is totally missing from it.

MavEtJu wrote:

How much visibility is there in the background work that GCA does do for the Australian Geocaching community? Absolutely none again.

CraigRat wrote:

I have no idea what this means, we run a website.

GCA shouldn't be just 'running a website', it should also be advocacy and information spreading. Right now if I go a large event, there is a container for swapping trackables, but there isn't a set of flyers with GCA information laying next to it. And as such people will not know it or be reminded about it. Informing the community is what will make the GCA website useful.

CraigRat wrote:

we are NOT a formal organisation, we are not a society, we are not even really a well formed project or anything. We are a website.

Trust me, you want it to be more, people want Geocaching Australia to be more. Start getting organised and it will happen.

GCA shouldn't be just 'running a website', it should also be advocacy and information spreading. Right now if I go a large event, there is a container for swapping trackables, but there isn't a set of flyers with GCA information laying next to it. And as such people will not know it or be reminded about it. Informing the community is what will make the GCA website useful.

GCA is a website. It's not a club you join, and therefore expect after paying your membership fees you see who the President, Treasurer or anybody else is, or what it's goals are. Unless the people running the website choose to show that. It's not your local sporting club, RSL or Geocaching NSW where you pay your money and as a member you have the right to certain information.

And yes, we are looking at printing fliers that can be left at events by people who want to do so. Just balancing the cost/benefit behind the scenes. After all any costs incurred are only covered by things like a few pathtag sales and people who donate. The majority of that is server and hosting costs. We spend $1000 on fliers, will we make $1000 back?

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Trust me, you want it to be more, people want Geocaching Australia to be more. Start getting organised and it will happen.

And by organised, you want a registered association? Which has to be in a certain state, with AGMs, things filed with Fair Trading every year (which comes at it's own cost - as Treasurer of GCNSW I am fully across all the requirements). Sorry this is a website coded by a couple of volunteers. Some others help volunteer this time to help steer the direction of the website, with games and so on. But in reality it relies on 2 people to keep it going at the moment. If either of them pull the pin none of us Senators have the power to keep it going.

If you would prefer an Australian Geocaching Association (or whatever) with a charter approved by members that represents Geocaching across the country to everyone, as well as providing listings then we need to reinvent the wheel and come up with something new as this isn't what this site is about.

If you would prefer an Australian Geocaching Association (or whatever) with a charter approved by members that represents Geocaching across the country to everyone, as well as providing listings then we need to reinvent the wheel and come up with something new as this isn't what this site is about.

Exactly, this is what I believe we are NOT and I have absolutely no desire to be. We are always happy to assist in any way we can to any geocaching organisations that wants to start up proactive advocacy and promotion of geocaching where it fits.

We are 'just a website' and that's it. Once the politics and legal obligations come in, so do the power-trippers and the over-eager. I only speak for myself here, but I have ZERO desire to be part of some kind of formal structure, I have enough of that in my real job.

GCA shouldn't be just 'running a website', it should also be advocacy and information spreading. Right now if I go a large event, there is a container for swapping trackables, but there isn't a set of flyers with GCA information laying next to it. And as such people will not know it or be reminded about it. Informing the community is what will make the GCA website useful.

Why? We are free to to what we want. We want to run a website, we have no obligations to anything else other than hosting geocaches to geocachers and provide that data as free and openly as technology and finances allow.

Any form of promotion outside of word of mouth costs us money we don't have. Advocacy of geocaching in general serves virtually no purpose for us.

Data is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 deed.This is agreed to when a geocacher lists their geocache at Geocaching Australia.

Can you please show me where this exactly happens as I can't seem to find anything with regards to copyright handling and license agreements for the submission of logs, upload of photos and creation of new caches.

This does not cover logs or photos, probably by omission rather than commission. We will distribute the logs as part of a cache listing but we don't distribute your images, except as a URL. If anyone else takes your images, uses them or uploads them to another site without your permission as there is no Share ALike licence, then you can go them for copyright breach.

Games that (may) have a competition attached, you are told they might be used, so your permission has been granted when you participate in the game.

If you believe that there are copyright issues, please let us know. I don't believe that Geocaching Australia is using image data for anything other than intended. As they are loaded to our site we will use them in our gallery, but I don't expect we use them off site and if so, they would be attributed.

Excellent, I had not seen that line because I was looking for it at the sign-up process and at the /my/cache/new page for it.

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If you believe that there are copyright issues, please let us know. I don't believe that Geocaching Australia is using image data for anything other than intended. As they are loaded to our site we will use them in our gallery, but I don't expect we use them off site and if so, they would be attributed.

Generally a copyright and license agreement for community sharing websites are like this:

"The submitter will retain the copyright of the submitted photos and text. The submitter will license the photos and text to GCA[*] to allow the storage, modification and display of the photos and text on their webserver and via their website, allow the storage offline for the use of backups, redistribution of the photos and text to third parties through the GCA API services for display and storage on the services provided by these third parties."

[*] And note that GCA on itself isn't a legal entity, as such the receiving party will be Caught@Work and Craigrat and they are then responsible for any issues with the data uploaded, not to think about the mess it will give when they retire in their roles and the website gets maintained by somebody else.

You will be thinking from "yeah too difficult, as if somebody ever..." but one day it will happen and you have to go through a bloody awful process to get everything legally correct plus have to deal with the fallout of people you cannot reach any more.